Residency from September 3rd 2024 until November 1st 2024
At Ada X
How can we conceptualize a communal space that nurtures connection and healing in a hopeful future, especially when confronting the harsh realities of the present?
“The Evaporated Tears of Sand Roses” is a poetic exploration of grief and transformation, reflecting the shared experiences of the Southwest Asia and North African (SWANA) diaspora. The installation aims to create a nurturing space for community, inviting individuals to connect through their collective trauma and healing. Sand roses, symbolizing beauty born from desolation, echo the intertwined stories of sorrow and resilience. During their residency at Ada X, Rihab Essayh will use our spaces and equipment to craft poetry that will serve as a soundscape for this work, which will later be exhibited at the Visual Arts Center of Clarington in Bowmanville, Ontario.
Sand roses form through the evaporation of water and moisture, drawing from the sediments of desert landscapes—salt, minerals, and sand—all interconnected through this transformative process. What begins as barren sand and rock evolves into something strikingly beautiful, much like the experiences of the SWANA diaspora. This reseach speaks to shared tears and collective trauma, highlighting moments of pain. Yet it is the process of evaporation that stands out; it symbolizes the catalyst for change and the collective support that enables us to heal and grieve together, forming the foundation of community.
–
Meet me under an ombre sky
Written by Sarah Nesbitt
“Do you know how to love? Do you know how to care? This is Civilization.” ~ Youssef Chahine
World building, in the manner of Afrofuturism; the total work of art, in the manner of Gesamtkunstwerk, or installation art are all terms used to describe Rihab Essayh’s approach to art making. But terms, while useful for bridging gaps in lieu of direct experience, fall flat when it comes to the dynamism and depth of Essayh’s approach. How can a term, theory, or art historical precedent account for the urgency of visioning another world? The depth and scope of the labour undertaken by Essayh and artists working in this vein might be obvious to some but can be too easily overlooked. How do we account for the place of emotional labour and community building as material in the many contexts of contemporary art?
A central tenant of Essayh’s practice is a deeply formed commitment to the non-binary understanding that softness and power can co-exist, or what artist Lora Mathis calls radical softness. Part of radical softness is valuing vulnerability and creating spaces of collective strength through care. Over the course of this residency, Essayh is rigorously investigating the challenging question of “what communal space [looks like] in a soft future when we are facing a bleak present?” As part of this inquiry, Essayh is developing a multifaceted work-in-progress comprised of several elements, including sound, video, and an immersive installation, that, when experienced together offers visitors a glimpse into “a hypothetical world that values rest and communion.”
Material and sonic elements from Essayh’s birthplace and ancestral homeland, Morocco, are touchstones for Essayh to draw on in their world building exercise. These emerge in the form of a soft sculpture modeled after traditional North African vernacular architecture without the signature central dome and comforting ombre hues of North African skies at sunset. The evaporated tears of sand roses alludes to grief, transformation and most urgently, a desire to live in connection as the ultimate antidote to capitalist extractionist violence.
Essayh’s dedication to the intersection of radical softness and liberatory imagination took on new depths in 2020 during the covid pandemic and is even more urgent and challenging in the current moment of multiple active, live-streamed genocides and an accelerated climate crisis. As the global community is confronted with the grave collapse of all perceived or existing norms, the art world is experiencing its own crisis. Cultural workers are losing their jobs or being forced out, artists are withdrawing from needed and prestigious opportunities, some have publicly vandalized or denied access to their work in protest. While many acts of resistance are visible, loud, and sometimes “violent” others are softer, less obvious. It is in this painful and tumultuous context that Essayh is building one of their most ambitious worlds yet, remaining rooted in a commitment to softness as power, and the discipline of hope in the face of very real grief.
–
Sarah Nesbitt is a writer, cultural worker, curator, and parent working between Cairo, Egypt and Tiohtià:ke.
Photo by Jack McCombe of Rihab Essayh’s solo exhibition, of longing and song birds, at Union Gallery, Kingston (2022).